I don’t care if you are 8 or 38 years old, a funny thing happens when we place a soccer ball on the grass in front of a goal. Something in our mind seems to ‘snap’ and we try and strike the ball as hard as we can. Most of us however don’t realize this actually slows down the soccer ball’s speed.

While creating Blast The Ball and Soccer U we had the pleasure of capturing literally hundreds of hours of soccer players and thousands of soccer kicks. This research showed some interesting results. Trying to kick a soccer ball ‘harder’ often slowed down the speed of the ball. Why you ask? Well let’s start with another sport that will help us understand.

Talk to the “long drive golf champs” and you will find a common thought among them. Swing at 80% of your top force. Now, why would a golf ball go farther at 80% vs. 100%? It comes down to the “speed of the club head” which is the last part of several body parts involved. Swinging, or “kicking”, at 100% of force often causes us to TENSE UP many of the muscles involved in the full “multifunction process” of the swinging / kicking motion. Think us this as a “whipping” motion. Staying slightly “loose” during the kick allows our foot to be at the end of an accelerating chain of events. Tighten up any of those events and you slow it down. Try throwing a baseball with a totally STIFF arm. The ball travels about half the speed. Keeping a loose arm with a whipping motion increases the speed greatly. The same applies to the soccer kick.

A couple of key points to a stronger, longer and faster soccer kick.

1) Relax.
Allow your entire body to go limp. Shake it out. Let your head, neck legs and every part of your body relax.
The only part of your body that will have tension is your ankle.

2) Large last stride / loading.
Make your last stride a long “forward hopping” load. Your heel should come close to your behind.

3) Allow your knee to come through first.
This is known as “storing the load”. Your lower leg will form a V shape. Keep that V shape as long as possible and at the last minute let it extent in a WHIPPING motion through the ball.

4) Kick with the big toe knuckle.
Approach the ball from a slight angle. The largest bone in your foot is the first metatarsal which is just above the big toe knuckle. This translates into FORCE or energy at impact.

5) Break the pane.
Pretend that the ball is sitting in front of a large pane of glass. You want to break the pane with your body, not just your leg or foot. This means that your forward momentum should continue through the shot. This will also cause you to land on your SHOOTING foot, not your plant foot.

6) Watch your foot contact the ball.
If you can see your foot strike the ball you are kicking properly. Doing this also keeps your body in a slightly “bent over” position. Straitening up will kill some of the power release.

To prove this point to younger players you should have them start VERY close to the goal. Have them move back little by little WITHOUT changing their kicking effort. When you see them “forcing” their shot, have them move back very close and feel the loose shot again a few times. Then have them move back out to a far point and use the same “close kick”. Both of you will be amazed.

On a final note I suggest you video tape the player kicking. You can even use digital cameras that have a video recorder. Try and set the “frames per second” as high as you can. This will allow you to slow the kick down to a frame by frame view. When we shot Blast The Ball, many of the cameras were set on 3000 frames per second. This allowed us to see EVERY detail of the kick. Younger players will be amazed at the footage and trust me, if you tell them they are doing something wrong they will disagree. Show them through video and they will understand.

We devote a whole chapter to this.

Don’t forget to watch the preview of the new SoccerU Technical Series.
The video is >>> HERE

SoccerU

For many years the SoccerU and Blast the Ball series have been the best selling, most in-depth, and useful technical training series around. The DVDs have helped 10’s of thousands of players around the world, in over 35 countries.
SoccerU and BTB took over 2 years to fully develop and create, and are 11 hours (yes eleven hours) of training. Every coach or soccer parent says the same thing, an amazing education that’s like getting a PHD in core technical and soccer skill training. It will help you SEE things (understand them) you would have never seen before.
Times are changing…
Coach V knows that more and more coaches and parents are using mobile devices, phones, etc, to watch videos and fewer and fewer use a “DVD players”. Also, coaches have wanted the ability to SHARE lessons with players, parents, and other coaches for a long time.
Imagine being able to send parents or players a ‘weekly class’ or training session. They get an email from their coach… “Please watch this instruction video. We will be doing these drills and working on these skills at Wednesday's practice.”
The players go through an online training session and are exposed to the skill training before they even hit the field. It’s AMAZING how this works. You’ll see the “light bulb” go on with so many players. Great for school coaches that can’t practice with players most of the year. Amazing tool for youth coaches that have VERY limited training time. You want to DO the drills… not spend your whole practice TEACHING the drills.
Over the next few months we will be breaking down the series into 10 - 20 minute videos. Uploading to YouTube and allow people to watch for free. Coach V will also be creating indiviual pages for each video at SoccerU.com and adding helpful notes and tips below each video.
Soccer clubs, soccer websites, coaches, parents, and all will be allowed to embed these videos on their websites, and share with whomever they wish. A great useful tool.